Wednesday, September 15, 2010

At Least the Vet Is Already Scheduled...

I snuck AJ an extra scoop of food this morning when I took Lilly out of the pasture. She was NOT happy about it, but I gave her a handful hoping she'd forgive me. AJ thought he struck gold. :)

The BO was at the barn power washing so I asked him if he saw my email. He said he did and when he fed last night and this morning, he watched Lilly walk over to AJ's bucket and eat his feed. He said he shooed her back to her own bucket and AJ came back to eat the rest of his feed. He said, "I can't say for sure that happens every time..." Well I can. In fact, I'm positive that it happens morning and night.

So he claims he's going to hang out down there with them and keep her away from his feed until AJ is done eating. He prefers that to tying her up. I suggested he space the feed buckets farther apart so it is more of an inconvenience for Lilly to steal AJ's feed. Right now both buckets are fairly close together and she can easily control both buckets at the same time.

In the meantime, I'm going to give him some extra feed whenever I'm there. I also want to ask the vet what she thinks about his weight when she comes out tomorrow.

That, however, is not the reason I'm glad the vet will be out tomorrow. Before I get to that, though, here are a couple recent shots of Lilly's leg.

Still puffy... and this last one really showcases the extent of the inflammation.

I've been leaving her bell boots on in the pasture, and I always put her SMB boots on when we work in the arena. They're the last thing to go on, and the first thing to come off, just to make sure her legs stay as cool as possible.

She was terrified of the power washer, so she had to put on a brave face each time we walked past. She did pretty good, but it got her a bit worked up. I was wondering how our ride was going to go.

We started by working on our walk. 10 minutes of loose rein walking, 5 minutes of contact walking and leg yields. She was doing really well and seemed to have forgotten all about the water monster. Then it was time for the trot. I've been working on my diagonals a little bit, trying to feel the difference between the inside and outside diagonal (with my eyes closed... lol) so it took me a minute to realize that she was off. I trotted her a few more strides at a sitting trot just to make sure. Yup. So I got off and jogged her in the arena so I could see which leg it was. She was definitely off on the left front, aka tendon leg. I took her out of the arena to the grass and jogged her there as well. She was only about a 1 out of 5 and I didn't see any signs of lameness at the walk, just the trot.

The problem now is that I can no longer say, "yeah, her tendon is swollen but she's not lame..." Now she's showing signs of lameness. I assume it is tendon related, although I can't be 100% sure. I checked her over and her hoof was clean and I couldn't find any other reason she should be lame except for the giant tendon inflammation that's sticking out of her leg.

Thankfully the vet is out to investigate the inflammation tomorrow anyway. I'm assuming she'll want to do another ultrasound. I'm trying to stay positive since she was just a little off, but it makes me think there really is something still going on in there.

Here she is after our ride... you'd swear I worked her for hours by the look on her face! Her muzzle is all shiny from the cortisone cream I've been using on her sunburn.

On a lighter note, this is Gunner... he's my barn buddy. He belongs to the BO so he's not always there, but when he is, he hangs with me and Lilly. He's not even a year old yet, but he is really well behaved for a 'puppy'. He also loves swimming in the pond and then throwing his wet, stinky body against my leg begging for scratches.

Today I misplaced the lid to Lilly's cookie jar. I was looking everywhere for it but couldn't find it anywhere. Shortly after I had given up and decided to head home, Guns came walking out of the barn with it in his mouth... Not sure if he was being helpful or if he was the culprit!

Unfortunately, the vet I'm seeing tomorrow isn't the friendly one from before. This is the vet that saw Lilly through her tendon lesion rehab. I wanted her to do the vaccines so she could look at Lilly's leg since she has the most experience with the leg.

That way, if we need another ultrasound she'll be familiar with what the old ones looked like.

Oh no! That tendon looks rather ugly, and I'm sorry she's lame on it again. As you know, I am dealing with lameness too. Never fun! Hope you get some good answers, or at least some kind of answers, from the vet! Keep us posted!